Bill requiring photo IDs for voters appears dead

NASHVILLE -- Legislation approved by the state Senate last week requiring government-issue photo identification cards to vote in Tennessee apparently failed in a House subcommittee Wednesday.

The chairman of the House elections subcommittee, Rep. Eddie Yokley, D-Greeneville, declared the bill had failed after the panel deadlocked 3-3 on an amendment that would have made it identical to the version that passed the Senate on April 13.

The bill is technically still alive, but in all likelihood is dead for the year. It is the second major Republican initiative in two days that has been effectively turned down by a House committee structure that has an equal number of Democrats and Republicans on most committees. On Tuesday, a separate subcommittee deadlocked 3-3 on a bill that would have capped damage awards in nursing home liability cases.

Republicans have 50 House members and Democrats 49. But new House Speaker Kent Williams, R-Elizabethton, appointed most committees and subcommittees with partisan balances that have led to tie votes on several highly partisan issues.

When the Senate ultimately approved the photo ID bill for voting last week, it had been amended to exempt people 65 and up from having to produce photo IDs, all nursing home residents and voters who sign an affidavit that they cannot afford a picture ID.

AARP and Common Cause of Tennessee opposed the bill on the grounds that it created an impediment to voting even though advocates of the measure presented no evidence that voter fraud is a serious problem in Tennessee.

But the House sponsor, Rep. Debra Maggart, R-Hendersonville, countered that the bill is not an effort to disfranchise poor people. Holding up a news photograph of an Iraqi woman showing her ink-stained finger as a sign she had voted for the first time following the U.S.-led defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime, Maggart said, "I've kept this picture of this woman because it's important that the ballot box has integrity and then when people go to vote, they are who they say they are."

After the various exemptions were added to the Senate version, it ended up passing the Senate last week with bipartisan support on a 29-3 vote. But in the House elections subcommittee, Democrats Yokley, Gary Moore of Nashville and Harry Tindell of Knoxville voted against the measure, while Republicans Jim Coley of Bartlett, Josh Evans of Springfield and Eric Watson of Cleveland voted in favor of it.